


Snapshots

by tentacledicks



Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-01-23 08:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21316888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks
Summary: A collection of ficlets for the #WordH4ckers event being run by @creslightning on Twitter.Ranging from WD1 to WD2, with tags to be updated as time goes on.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	1. Partners - Aiden & Damien

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title: LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH, EVERYTIME I DO IT MAKES ME LAUGH, EVERY TIME IT MAKES ME--

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or: The One Where Damien Is Less Of An Asshole Than Originally Anticipated

“Aiden, _ really_. You’re stupid when you’re tired. Try some ambien for once.” Damien’s dry tones cut through the throbbing headache he’d been struggling with for hours, and Aiden hissed softly as the lights came on. Maybe the glare of computer screens hadn’t been good for him, but it was still better than the cheap bulbs in their apartment.

“You think I haven’t tried?” he gritted out, pressing his palms into the burning coals his eyes had become. The ache stabbed into his skull, grinding through his sinuses and down into his jaw, and he was pretty sure death would be a blessing at this point. He hadn’t slept in four days. By now, the headache was bad enough that he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to sleep at _ all_.

Cool fingertips pressed to his temples, trailing down his cheeks to his jaw, then traveled back to brush up against the taut muscles in his neck. A second later, Damien let out a put-upon sigh and tugged Aiden’s chair backwards. Away from the computer.

Not like it would do much, but Aiden let out a pained noise at the motion anyways.

“Here. Let me see your face.” Damien’s long, elegant fingers curled around his wrists, tugging until Aiden finally gave up and let them be pulled away. The light cut into his brain, dragging tears up that Aiden had to blink away just to catch a clear glimpse of Damien’s expression. Faintly exasperated, faintly pitying, but mostly amused. Damien was like a cat in some ways, always finding the funny side of whatever bullshit happened to them.

Now that Aiden’s face was uncovered, Damien shifted his grip, pressed his fingers tight against the bridge of Aiden’s nose. The pain doubled, tripled, increased exponentially until he thought his head would explode, he’d throw up and die, god what the fuck was Damien—

And then, abruptly, it was gone.

He blinked. Dragged in a ragged breath that almost felt like a sob, his own hands wrapped around Damien’s wrists hard enough to bruise. Blinked again when the pain didn’t make a reappearance, successfully beaten back into a dull, faint throb at the base of his skull.

“What the fuck,” Aiden said blankly, blinking tears away as he gentled his grip on Damien’s wrists.

“It’s a trick for killing a migraine fast,” Damien told him, words dripping with smugness. “Of course, it’ll come back again if you don’t _ sleep_, but you knew that already. Come on tiger, let’s get you into bed. You’re useless to me if you can’t break into that Titus field office we’re planning on robbing.”

Still dazed, Aiden let himself be tugged up and out of the chair. Damien _ was _ right—the code wasn’t for anything vital, and they did have a small window before Titus’s updated security system cut off their access entirely. He just… hadn’t thought he’d be able to sleep. Not with his head aching the way it had been. Not with his insomnia acting up worse than usual.

But now the headache was gone, and even if the _ office _ was now brightly lit, Damien had magnanimously left the bedroom of their hideout dark and cool. The bed was half-made, sheets tangled and so terribly inviting, and Aiden struggled out of his sweater as he stumbled towards it. Maybe, if he was lucky, it would work this time. Maybe he’d be able to _ sleep_.

“Are you staying?” he remembered to ask a second too late, the words muffled by the cotton of his undershirt.

“Of course I’m staying,” Damien said, dry and so utterly in control of himself, like always. “What are partners for?”


	2. Death/Regrets - DedSec

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or: Horatio's Funeral

Maybe it was all those action movies he watched, but Marcus felt like funerals deserved rain. Overcast skies at the very least, some kind of grey cloud cover to block the sun out, prove to the world that someone wonderful had passed on. Anything but bright sunlight and blue skies on an uncustomarily warm day.

He was in all black, like the rest of DedSec. (Not that Wrench had to do much but switch out his jeans.) Nothing too fancy, because they couldn’t afford to be seen at the funeral—Horatio’s family were beneficiaries on his Nudle life insurance plan, and none of them wanted to jeopardize that. If Nudle caught wind that he  _ had _ been part of DedSec, they’d cut that financial cord quick as they could. Fuck that. His family deserved better.

“Horatio deserved better,” Sitara echoed his thoughts, perched on the edge of the rooftop with a beer in hand. Her eyeliner was dark, smudged a little but not overdramatic. She’d been smart enough to forgo the mascara.

“Yeah,” Marcus said, swirling the amber liquid inside his bottle as he stared out at the line of cars leaving the graveyard. Good turnout for the funeral at least. Horatio had a big family, and he’d made a lot of friends.

“We could still do a twenty-one gun salute.” Wrench handed a bottle over to Josh, clinking them together in a toast, then leaned against the same railing Sitara was sitting on. “Maybe not right now, but bring in some people, all hands on deck, fire some blanks into the air. It’s doable.”

“Nudle’s already suspicious,” Sitara said with a grimace, downing half her beer in one go. “Too risky.”

“But he deserved it.” Despite how pissed off he was, Marcus tried not to let the bitterness seep through. He couldn’t afford to crack, not when it meant showing just how many chinks in his armor there still were. Self-sacrificing to a fault, that was him—and Horatio had  _ still _ died in his stead. It wasn’t fair.

This was the whole reason they’d brought him into the fold. They needed a point guy, Wrench’s back was too fucked up and Sitara’s leadership was too valuable for them to play bullet sponge, and Marcus had been so fired up and ready to change things. Horatio was like Josh, like most of the DedSec members even outside the inner circle: vulnerable. Fragile. Someone who should never,  _ ever _ have been in the frontlines, no matter the circumstances. The Nudle hack had been a fluke.  _ Marcus _ should have been the one grabbed by the Tezcas.

Didn’t matter if it had been a freak accident. The beer was still bitter as it washed down his throat, and Marcus knew he’d trade places with Horatio in a heartbeat if he could.

“I set up the first transfer to trigger after Nudle starts to pay out,” Josh said quietly, his beer untouched in his fretful hands. “They’ll think it’s just part of the life insurance policy. All of the money’s been stripped of identifiers, and I bounced it overseas before bringing it back so the Tezcas can’t chase it. No one should know.”

“You did good, man.” Marcus set his empty bottle next to the cooler they’d brought up, then rested his hand on Josh’s shoulder in a silent offer of support.

“We’re going to make them pay, right?” Didn’t matter who asked the question, because all of them were vibrating with it, one voice for a chorus of restrained fury.

Marcus fed off that anger, that despair, that desire for change, and watched the last of the official mourners leave. Didn’t matter who answered, because DedSec was united in a cause, especially this one. It just felt right for him to be the one who said it.

“Yeah. We’re gonna make them pay.”


	3. Friendship - Sitara & Horatio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or: Realizing That Four People Isn't Enough

Sitara was _ way _ too fucking smart for her own good. It stung sometimes—the last thing Horatio needed was another rundown of how she’d aced Nudle’s application test. His ego was still bruised from the _ first _ time she’d compared answer with him. But mostly, the problem was that her clever brain sometimes outran her common sense. She aimed higher, ran further, reached out beyond her limitations and the limitations of her gear, and sometimes she didn’t look before she leaped, too sure of that big brain of hers and its ability to calculate on par with Josh.

It meant she ended up in situations like this one.

“You good, sis?” He climbed the fire escape two rungs at a time, hauling himself up with an ease he knew his coworkers would raise eyebrows at. Far as anyone at Nudle knew, Horatio Carlin was an upstanding citizen who came and played the corporate games before getting on with his life.

Far as _ almost _ anyone at Nudle knew, that was. He’d been getting a bad vibe from Brody, and it made keeping his private life and his public one seperated a much bigger imperative.

“Fucking broke my ankle,” Sitara growled as he finally reached the rooftop.

“What, you didn’t know you weren’t immune to gravity?” Despite his chiding tone, Horatio kept his fingers gentle as he examined her ankle. She’d gotten the shoe and sock off not a second too soon—it was already red and livid, swollen up to the point that anything on it would have been stuck.

She hissed at him furiously when he tested its motion, then subsided when he only rolled his eyes in response.

“The good news is, I think it’s only a sprain,” he said eventually, “so you’re not gonna need surgery. Bad news is that a sprain’s probably worse, ‘cause that means there’s not a whole hell of a lot we can do for it. You’re gonna need my help to get off this roof either way.”

“God _ damn _ it.” With a groan, Sitara let herself fall backwards, foot still awkwardly resting in his lap as she threw her arms over her face.

“Not your coolest move.” Still, it wasn’t like she needed him to tell her that. Sitara was good at self-reflection, which was infuriating when he wanted to be mad at her. She knew when she’d fucked up.

“Ugh. Wrench has a broken back, Josh won’t do recon, and you’re all _ legit _ now.” Sitara sighed, then lifted an arm to inspect his sympathetic expression. “What are we going to do, Horatio?”

It wasn’t just the broken ankle she was talking about. His job at Nudle meant he’d been stepping back from running DedSec, leaving more and more work on her shoulders. Keeping the ragtag group of anarchists and infosec radicals under control was a full time job, even without the protests and investigative operations they used to go out on. Guilty as he was over it, Horatio _ knew _he was doing good work at Nudle. Some of them had to be legit, always.

But she couldn’t do it alone, and she _ really _ couldn’t do it on an injured ankle. With Wrench and Josh rarely out in the field, their inner circle was too damn small for this.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do: we’re gonna get you some crutches, you’re gonna let Wrench laugh at you for like a week while Josh does that thing where he hovers and tries not to look like he’s hovering, and then we’ll bring someone new in.” 

He set her foot on the ground, gently, then stood up and offered her his hands. Using his weight as a ballast, Sitara heaved herself up on her good foot, leaning against him heavily as he turned them towards the rooftop exit.

“You got any people in mind?” she asked, hopping a little when he adjusted his grip to unlock the door.

“Yeah, I’ve got my eyes on someone. He’s good.” Horatio grinned at her. “_Real _ good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FELL BEHIND.
> 
> Expect intermittent updates to this while I try and catch up and get back on track. ;u;


	4. Hacked - Wrench & Josh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or: You Don't Fuck With The Hawt Sawce

The crack of a sniper rifle rang out right as his screen went red and bloody, the death cam rotating around his headless corpse for ten seconds before he respawned. There was no way a human had made that shot.

“See?” Josh said. “Aimbotting.”

“Son of a bitch!” Wrench dropped the controller rather than throwing it, outraged slashes cutting down the eyes of his mask. “It’s fucking console! Who cheats on console?!”

“DreadShredder420.” Josh retrieved the controller, starting to navigate through the map while avoiding all the gaps in the map geometry that might allow a stray shot to come through. He was much better at these kinds of games than Wrench, but this aimbotter had pissed him off too. 

“How is he _ doing _ it? It’s not like PC, he’s definitely got a cracked system, but—who is this fuck? Who is this fucking fucker?” Wrench leaned forward, the expression on his mask flickering back to the tiny apostrophes he used for intense concentration.

Which was the point. Josh could find the guy, given the time and ability, but he couldn’t find him _ and _ play the game at the same time. He needed the hacker to take the bait.

Wrench, with his crude and clumsy approach to games, made perfect bait.

“Here,” Josh said, handing him the controller back. Wrench immediately started charging around without any sort of strategy, Josh’s careful route abandoned in favor of whatever hallway looked the darkest. It was dumb. It worked for Wrench about eighty percent of the time.

The hacker headshot him again, prompting an electronic and grating metallic shriek. Josh winced, pulling his laptop closer, then finished hacking into the server data for their instance of the game. His IP address was easy to isolate and disregard, but there were twelve people in this server getting their game avatars brutally murdered.

Two more died, too swiftly for a human to have done it. Josh noted the IP of the player that had killed them, then nodded to himself when Wrench roared in rage a second later when his character died as well. Better to be careful and thorough than angry and reckless; he traced the connection through the VPN their hacker was using, making certain with every bounce that he was still on their trail.

Bingo.

A thin, tiny smile crossed his face, Wrench in hysterics beside him. There was a stream of swears crackling out of his mask, but the noise was regular enough that Josh could handle it for now. Wrench was _ loud _, but at least he was consistently loud.

“I’m going to _ find _ him and I’m going to _ chew his legs off _ with my EVOLUTIONARILY SUPERIOR INCISORS,” Wrench screeched as the match finally ended. “Josh! _ Tell _ me you found him!”

“I found him.” Josh looked up, smiling a little wider. “You want to help me fuck him up?"

“Josh, baby, you know me _ so well_.”


	5. Kidnapped - Marcus/Wrench

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or: PTSD Is A Bitch Sometimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm skipping 'Anniversary' because it's only half done and I liked this one. I'll go back and post it later, but I'm definitely doing these prompts as the will comes now. :P

He couldn’t get the cameras to work, he couldn’t get the _ fucking _ cameras to work, no matter how much he fumbled at his phone with shaking fingers they wouldn’t respond and he couldn’t stop the car crusher if he couldn’t get eyes on it, no fucking wonder the Bratva let him keep his phone because they knew he was _ fucked_, he was so _ fucked_, he was so fucking dead and if he could just get the _ fucking cameras to work— _

His eyes snapped open, the black blurriness around him deep enough that he couldn’t make anything out. He couldn’t make his limbs work, couldn’t twitch his fingers or move his toes, and the overwhelming feeling of dread hadn’t left because the crusher was still going, was still coming down, and he was just a small squishy human about to become a very red stain— 

Marcus gasped, fingers digging into the sheets as he finally got his hands to work. His heart was pounding a mile a minute, the sweat on his skin cold with the fan going in the room, and he still couldn’t make out fucking _ anything_. Was he dead? Was this what it was like being dead?

Headlights dragged over the foiled-over windows, the light creeping in through the edges where the aluminum was torn and not quite fitted to the window frame. Even that little bit of light helped turn the foggy darkness into blurred but familiar shapes: the wooden crates Wrench used as bedside tables, the mound of clothes in varying states of cleanliness, the faint shape of a figure in one corner that Marcus knew was a cardboard cutout of Jimmy Siska. _ His _ cardboard cutout, thank you Wrench, ‘borrowing’ didn’t mean ‘keeping’.

He reached out, fumbling for his glasses, then shoved them on his nose as he sat up. Jimmy Siska’s face came into clearer view, the room dark again but with those blue-edged shadows that let Marcus see where everything was. Wrench’s room was a minefield of things to trip on, not that Marcus intended to leave the bed just yet. His hands were shaking too much. His legs weren’t much better.

He just—he just needed a moment. That was all. Just a moment to freak out, and then he’d be fine, and no one would have to know that he still had fucking _ nightmares _ about that shitshow with the Bratva.

A hand slapped limply against his knee, groping around for a couple seconds before the Wrench-shaped lump under the covers groaned. Too late for Marcus to pretend like he wasn’t sitting up, so he didn’t bother to lay back down again; Wrench was already heaving himself up to flop into Marcus’s side, his bony body jabbing into the meat of Marcus’s stomach as he dug his chin into Marcus’s shoulder.

“Man, you’re made of knives,” Marcus whispered, trying to keep his voice from wavering. He didn’t quite succeed, and Wrench peeled one eye open to squint at him.

“My protective spiky exoskeleton reveals an even spikier vulnerable core,” Wrench whispered back, his crooked fingers splaying over the soft muscle in Marcus’s belly. “Hey. Talk to me?”

Marcus swallowed tightly, trying to dislodge the sudden lump in his throat. He’d been doing good, hadn’t he? He’d kept his game face on. He’d hugged it out, he let DedSec get their revenge, he’d grinned and fistbumped and partied on the boat with them, he’d shown everyone that he was _ fine _ and they didn’t have to worry anymore. He was the ground guy, after all; risks were to be expected.

Couldn’t let them start worrying about him and put themselves at risk. He was _ not _ going to lose any more of his friends, and that meant making sure they all thought he was copacetic. Everything was fine. He was fine.

“It’s good, Wrench,” he said, the wobble of unshed tears giving lie to the words. “I mean—don’t worry about it is all. Just a nightmare, right?”

Wrench grunted, then eeled into his lap with all the grace and elegance of a broken mannequin. Another car drove by, lights briefly setting a pale glow to Wrench’s skin, and there was a sad, tired look on his face as he got settled on Marcus’s thighs. Even with the light creeping into the room, the burn on Wrench’s eye was an inky splotch at night.

“You know, I used to wake up screaming after the FBI grabbed me?” Wrench asked, taking a totally different direction than the one Marcus had been expecting. All the excuses and deflections he’d readied died before he could say them, robbed of the combatant they were meant to face.

“Yeah?” His own voice was hoarse still, the lump in his throat doing its best to choke him out.

“Every fuckin’ night, Marcus. It wasn’t just being grabbed—I mean, I told you how my back got broken, fascist pigs aren’t anything new—it was being stuck in that room. Not knowing if you guys would be able to find me. Dusan let me go, but we both knew he could’ve kept me there forever, right? That was why he kept my mask. ‘We’ll always be able to find you and disappear you.’ So I’d get these nightmares that the FBI was back and since it was the middle of the night, none of you would know, and I’d be stuck in a dark little room _ forever_.”

“Shit,” Marcus whispered, reaching a hand up to cup Wrench’s cheek. “When did they stop?”

“When you started sleeping with me?” Wrench let out a watery laugh, curling his fingers around Marcus’s wrist. “I mean, that’s why I used to work nights and take catnaps in the Hackerspace. But then you started staying the night, or letting me stay at your place, and it was like—duh, they can’t grab me now, _ Marcus _ is here.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” He should have known. They’d all assumed Wrench was burning the midnight oil because everything had gotten crazy right after then—Horatio had died, they’d gotten access to Blume’s satellites, Ray had started pushing them to bigger and more dangerous targets—but Wrench was his best friend. His _ boyfriend_. He should have known.

“Were you going to tell me you woke up tonight?” Wrench asked, still pressing his face into Marcus’s palm.

He didn’t have a good answer for that. After a couple seconds, Wrench nodded, slowly dipping forward until he was draped over Marcus’s chest again, hugging him tight. His face was hidden now, leaving Marcus able to blink away the tears without feeling guilty.

“I thought giving you the chance to be in the action would help,” Wrench said, fingers dancing fretfully over Marcus’s back. “And like, you’re good at driving, you told me that you love how free it makes you feel, I figured thumbing your nose at the Bratva while we set the charges and shit up—I didn’t wanna be overprotective and freak you out? I could do the clown thing, we’d laugh about it, you’d be okay.”

“I am okay.” That was a fucking lie, and he knew it, but without Wrench looking at him, Marcus could rub a hand up under his glasses and pretend like he wasn’t. Wasn’t crying, wasn’t still fucked up over this, wasn’t waking up from a panic attack.

“Yeah, pull the other one, it’s got bells on it. Just… talk to me? When it’s all gone to shit in your head, talk to me. This is a no judgement zone, Marcus. Nothing you say can make me leave.”

He tried to laugh but the noise that came out of his throat was closer to a sob. His arms curled around Wrench’s back, keeping him close and keeping him from sitting back up. He was fine, he really was fine, he just needed a minute. Needed a couple minutes. Just needed—

Wrench didn’t move, only hugged him tighter and pressed a soft, dry kiss to his neck. Marcus buried his face in the ragged strands of Wrench’s hair, the dark roots that were growing out and the dry, wispy bleached ends that caught in the the tears dragging down his cheeks. He would be fine. He _ would _ be.

He just needed a minute to remind himself.


End file.
